


A Memorable Fancy

by Argyle



Category: Good Omens
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-18
Updated: 2005-04-18
Packaged: 2019-02-11 19:54:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12942537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: Some Romantics have all the luck. (London, 1777)





	A Memorable Fancy

Shortly after breakfast, the sun broke free of the clouds.

Aziraphale dabbed a napkin across his lips. Humming faintly, he cleared the table of his cup, saucer, and the remnants of a serving of eggs benedict. The spring air that poured through the open window smelled faintly of lilac, a gentle force that called out from beyond the balustrade, falling across his tongue and filling his lungs with both urgency and familiarity. What adventures you will have, it promised; what sport, what fresh delights to be tasted, knowledge, warmth, and all that is full of life.

He saw the leaves rustling through the high boughs of the trees and the long-stemmed irises bow with the receding mist. The sky was bright, the streets glistened.

It made him want nothing if not to bury himself in a book.

There were recent publications on cartography, exotic flora, and the advancements of philosophy; there were long forgotten ones on the fate of Nature. Aziraphale smiled. A number of weeks before, he had recovered a digest of Restoration drama from an auction, as well as the three-volume account of a mutinous buccaneer and a curious collection of fanciful notations entitled _The Language of Birds_ [1].

Within a fortnight, this one book on birdwatching (which was, notably, not a birdwatching book at all) paved the way for five more, and then another sixteen; Aziraphale arranged them on the shelf that gathered the most tasteful beams of natural light, and the golden emblems on their spines gleamed through the long hours of the London afternoon. As he stood back to admire them, he felt a pinch of anxiety in his stomach, but then shook his head and smiled; surely such things were not at all related to showmanship [2].

It was only after customers attempted purchase them that he thought to take up a more genuine interest in birds, their living arrangements, flight patterns, and mating activities. In the span of a week, he had identified no less than six types in the outer-masonry of his shop, and wondered in passing why the dapper wren would be wont to get on so well with the wandering lapwing.

Aziraphale pulled a small notebook from his waistcoat. “Sparrow, robin, raven, nightingale,” he read aloud, making a series of dashes and dots in the margin, and then frowned. “Nightingale?”

“ _Poo-tee-weet?_ ” came a whistle beside his window.

“Hello!” the angel chirped approvingly. “I don’t believe I’ve seen _you_ before.” He threw his frock coat about his shoulders, lingering by the mirror only to straighten his lace, and strung several books and together with the latest issue of _Aves of Albion_.

The sun fell warmly against his cheeks as he stepped outside. He glanced skyward, a palm raised to shade his eyes, and tilted his head as in concentration.

“ _Poo-tee-weet?_ ” sang the nightingale.

Aziraphale sighed.

Taking several steps backward, he saw that it sat perched several stories above his head.

After squelching the initial impulse to simply unsheathe his wings and fly, he reasoned that to climb the tree would be somehow be less ostentatious, and so he tossed his parcel over his shoulder and straddled the trunk. He grappled and pulled, shimmied and slipped, gnashed his teeth and knit his brow, and at last found a relatively comfortable position against a bough. “Well,” he panted, brushing wayward leaves from his shoulders, “that was no bother at all.”

The nightingale chattered gaily.

With a smile, Aziraphale thumbed through his books; he glanced up from the page and gazed through his spyglass at the bird with rapt interest. “ _Very_ nice proportions,” he said. “I daresay--”

“Sir!”

Aziraphale started. “Good heavens, but I _knew_ there was something odd.”

“Sir, please! Might I have the honor of speaking to you for a moment?”

“Why, certainly.” Aziraphale closed his books and stared into the nightingale’s glistening black eyes. It flittered on the branch. “At your leisure, my dear fellow.”

“I am down here, sir.”

“ _Oh!_ ” Leaning forward, Aziraphale clutched the tree with whitened fingertips, only to see a well-dressed young man with quick, wild eyes and wind-blown hair standing below. Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Of course.”

“Thank you, sir. I cannot say that your presence here does not confuse me as much as it delights, but I have waited many weeks for it.”

“I see. And what is it that you were looking for? A book on young love, perhaps? Forgive me, but you will have to search elsewhere. As erratic as its hours are, my shop no longer caters to such things.”

“I do not search for heartache, sir, nor for hemlock.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Aziraphale said in a vague voice. “Now, if you will allow me to--”

“You are an angel!” the young man laughed suddenly, clapping hands before him. “I would allow most anything.”

“Oh, I...”

“Do you live in the trees, sir?”

“What?” Aziraphale frowned. “Live in the trees? Absolutely not!”

“Ah, how silly of me,” he replied. “You must be like Gabriel, then, making merry at Bunhill Fields.”

“You saw Gabriel at Bunhill Fields? Why would he, er... Oh. Nonsense, my dear boy, my digs here in Soho are _quite_ civilized, and I am most certainly not an--”

“Why do you wear such colloquial attire? Surely you must be more at ease in the silk and sky of the divine.”  
  
“Oh, but Crowley so adamantly assured me that these are the very best,” Aziraphale protested, glancing down at his breeches. They were royal blue, a shade that offset the bright hue of his stockings and the gleaming buckles of his shoes, and their cut drew the eye down the thigh just so. Aziraphale smiled; the glint in Crowley’s eye at the sight of them could not have been purely coincidental.

“I do not know of whom you speak,” the young man said, stepping closer, “but I can only imagine that he is as great as you.”

“I’m certain he would appreciate the sentiment,” Aziraphale said dryly.

“But where are your wings? Have you not a harp to aid you in singing on high?”

“Er, well...” Aziraphale slid against the bough, inwardly cringing at the thought of the dust that was undoubtedly collecting against the seams of his jacket, and managed, “What did you say your name was?”

“I did not say, sir.” He extended his hand and then set it back to his side with a frown as though for the first time realizing that Aziraphale was still poised a number of feet above his head. “It is William Blake.”

“Well, then, Mr. Blake. It has been an honor, but I’m afraid I must--”

“Please, let me give you this,” Blake said, pushing his hands into his pockets and hurriedly reciting poetry under his breath. “You must understand, sir. No other heavenly beings have been good enough to talk to me for as long as you have.”

With a distracted sigh, Aziraphale pulled a heavy lace handkerchief from his sleeve and dashed it across his brow, idly wondering whether it was too late to reconsider this hobby of birdwatching. “You don’t say.”

“Ah!” Blake cried out. He laughed a little unsteadily and pulled a small folio from his jacket. “Here it is!”

The nightingale flew away, up and up and out of sight.

“Friend of yours?”

“No!” Aziraphale flinched, nearly toppling over, and relaxed as he saw that Crowley was seated, supine and snakelike, atop the branch behind him. “He was merely... That is to say, I was observing a young songbird and found that the proper vantage point for a better view was none other than the middle limbs of this tree.”

“You climbed a tree to see a bird?”

“Yes.”

“And where does he come in?” Crowley pointed to Blake, whose face had visibly drained of color.

Aziraphale dropped his gaze. “Er, Mr. Blake is a poet.”

“A poet?”

“I am apprenticed as an engraver, sir, and soon to begin practicing on my own,” Blake said, his voice hushed and halting. His eyes widened. “Are you in league, sirs?”

“What the bloody H-- _what_ is that supposed to mean?” Crowley hissed, turning towards Aziraphale. “What have you been telling him?”

“Nothing!”

Crowley put a hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder and leaned past him, his scowl twisting into a sharp, encouraging smile. “My friend has lately been unwell, you see. It’s best to not take heed of these little turns,” he cajoled.

“Really, my dear, I’ve not-- ouf,” the angel broke off as Crowley’s elbow dug against his side. “It has been pleasant to meet you, Mr. Blake.” He smiled serenely and raised a hand. “Good day.”

“Please, sir! When may I see you--” Blake began to protest, but he paused as his papers pulled out of his grip, quite seemingly eager to take flight of their own will, and proceed to chase after them down the street.

“Don’t look so smug, my dear,” Aziraphale scoffed, brushing a bit of bark from his stockings.

“The things I get myself into.” Crowley rubbed his hands together as with a job well done. He caught Aziraphale’s eye. “What were you doing up here, anyway?”

“I told you. There was a nightingale.”

“Nightingale?” A slow smile. “And I suppose the fact that you’re sitting at the exact eye-level of Miss Watson’s changing room is hardly intentional.”

“Oh, _come_ ,” Aziraphale laughed lightly, pocketing his spyglass. “I find very _little_ interest in actresses.”

“Mm,” Crowley agreed. “I’m sure the poet felt the same way.”

“As a matter of fact, he seemed to feel a number of things.”

“Did he, now?”

With a glance towards the ground, Aziraphale shifted against the branch. It groaned beneath their combined weight with the voice of a dozen life-ages, and he grimaced. “What I’m trying to say...”

“Yes?”

“He _knew_. I’m certain of it.”

Crowley frowned. “Knew what, exactly?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, leaning forward to whisper imploringly into Crowley’s ear.

“You’re joking,” Crowley laughed, arching a brow. He set a hand to the angel’s arm and squeezed it with far more exasperation than concern. “Let’s get you down from here -- clearly you’ve had quite enough sun for one day.”

“No,” Aziraphale replied, solemnly shaking his head. “He looked me straight in the eye and said it as though it was the most natural thing in the world, rather like he was stating the color of the sky or describing the relative sweetness of blancmange.”

“Blancmange?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”

Both blinked.

“I see,” Crowley said dryly.

“He apparently speaks to principalities and spectral beings on a regular basis. Do you know, he even met with Gabriel at Bunhill Fields? I rather wonder whether he’s run into anyone more prone to--”

“Do you mean to tell me that you actually _believe_ him?”

“Why would I have a reason not to?”

Crowley shrugged. “He’s obviously quite mad,” he said. “You must’ve noticed by now that such ailments develop sooner in poetic-types than in others. Remember old Ennius? Now, _he_ was a character, especially as far as Romans went.”

Aziraphale shuddered. “Don’t remind me.”

“Who was it that gave him that impressive idea about the peacocks?” Crowley chuckled, a smile slowly crossing his features. “Oh, yes, I seem to recall--”

“It was a slight misunderstanding, however unfortunately timed, and nothing more.”

“He _did_ look rather like a peacock, though, what with those beady eyes. You were perfectly right to make note of the resemblance to him.”

“Yes, well...” Aziraphale trailed off, intently tugging upon the lace at his cuffs. “I had heard quite enough of his Homeric communiqués.”

“They don’t make them like they used to.” Crowley shook his head remorsefully. “Have you had lunch yet?”

Aziraphale smiled and followed Crowley down to the pavement. “No.” With a sublime calm, he held his books to his chest and straightened his powdered wig. “What did you have in mind?”

“Anything winged.”

“Ah.”

“Now, this Blake fellow,” Crowley continued as they started forward. “Do you suppose he had something else in mind?”

“Something else?”

“You know... an ulterior motive.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not following you.”

“Was he--,” Crowley cleared his throat, “--coming on... to you?”

Aziraphale smiled and looked away. “Really, my dear. I haven’t the foggiest idea of where you acquire these outrageous notions, though he _did_ try to give me the rose from his buttonhole and a sheaf of rhyming verse from his waistcoat, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“What type of rose was it?”

“Oh, it was a hothouse Maréchal Niel, of course.”

Crowley quickened his pace.

\------------------

Aziraphale whispered softly under his breath, adjusted the spectacles on the bridge of his nose, and drew his quill in time to the pattering of rain against the windowpane. It was the third day of May, calm and dreamy, and he had spent the better part of the past week working through the stack of manuscripts that had accumulated during his and Crowley’s impromptu sojourn in Malta [3]. He had decided to actually open his shop to customers only as an afterthought.

The bell jingled once, twice, and the door clanked open and closed.

With a sigh, Aziraphale looked up from his papers. “May I help you with any-- Oh.” He stiffened. “Mr. Blake, was it?”

“Yes.” The young man smiled shyly, glancing away. “I only wish to browse at present, thank you.”

“As you like. Do let me know if you have any questions.”

Blake smiled again, this time with a clearer strain of anxiety, and turned towards a shelf of political satires. Aziraphale saw that his hands were shaking as he pulled a volume down at random and began to flip through it; he gazed over its edge, his jaw taut and his brow creased in thought, and down again before Aziraphale was able to hold his eye for more than a moment.

“You might like to look through old Lemuel’s latest,” Aziraphale said. “It’s a travel narrative, naturally, but rather insightful. Talking giraffes and such.”

“Oh.” Blake turned back to the shelf and took down another book. “Yes, thank you.”

Aziraphale cleared his throat, tapping his fingertips on the desktop.

Blake continued to watch him.

The clock ticked.

“Look here!” he said suddenly. “That is quite enough. If you have something to say, do so, or I shall be forced to request that to take your leave.”

Blake looked up. “Please, sir. I hope that you do not find my presence inappropriate.”

“Inappropriate?” Aziraphale echoed. He smoothed his jacket and took a deep breath. “Whatever would give you that idea?”

“I only wished to meet with you again, but beyond the eye of your friend.”

“Ah.”

“He sets me ill at ease, sir. Forgive me for being so bold as to say so, but it is true,” he continued in a soft, wondering voice. Swallowing, he set the book to the side and took a step forward. “Does he not to you?”

Aziraphale smiled and chuckled lightly, “One gets used to him after a while, I suppose.”

“But how can that be? My pulse seemed to grow slack within my veins, the hair upon the nape of my neck stood on end, my breath caught in my throat and was still...” he trailed off. “Will you not explain the truth of it?”

With a sigh, Aziraphale stood. “All right,” he said. “If you wish to know, you must now come with me.”

“Where?”

“Just through here, my dear boy.”

Blake hesitated. “And what will you tell me?”

“Three things.”

“What are they?”

“Oh, you’ll see.”

“Are they difficult to comprehend?”

Aziraphale laughed. “Surely not!”

“And will it take long?” Blake’s eyes were eerily bright, widening with the lyrical energy that was only haphazardly contained by the curve of his lashes. His hands were trembling, and he crossed his arms over his chest.

“No, not long.” The angel raised a hand to his throat and loosened the linen that was knotted there. “I daresay we will have you back by teatime.”

\------------------

“Well, what happened?”

Aziraphale shrugged, sipping from his cup. “You oughtn’t to worry -- I’ve taken the liberty of setting him straight.”

“Did you show him, then?”

“Show him? Oh, certainly not. _Really_ , my dear. I simply...” He made an airy gesture and frowned down at his newspaper. “Ah. There’s to be another estate sale in Surrey. Large library, many first editions,” he murmured appreciatively. “Are you free on Tuesday, my dear?”

“No.” Crowley tapped his spoon against his saucer anxiously. “You were saying?”

“Was I?”

“Blake,” he prompted through gritted teeth. “What did you say to him?”

“Oh! It’s nothing, really.” Aziraphale looked up to meet Crowley’s scowl with a confidingly purposeful smile. “I set him to write a commemorative poem about it.”

“About _you_ , you mean.”

“Good heavens, no. Don’t let’s be absurd. About the _bird_.”

“The bird?”

“It’s to be an ode.”

“Iambic?”

“Well, no... I didn’t think--”

“Obviously not.” Crowley narrowed his eyes. “And you don’t expect him to begin hanging on your coattails again?”

“No, no. He became very receptive when I led him into my back room. Such youths must needs a bit of straightforward reasoning, really. _You_ know how it is.”

“I’m sure you set a very positive example for him.”

“Oh, _indeed_.”

“Mm.” A low chuckle. “That’s well and good, but if I ever see him again -- or if he ever tries to _talk_ to me -- he’s... he’s...”

“Toast?”

“Please.” Crowley set his cup down. “Have you any of the raspberry jam that I like?”

“Of course.”

\------------------

Some years later, Crowley tossed a small volume onto the counter in Aziraphale’s shop. The cover was finely pressed and, judging by its sharp scent of ink and new leather, freshly printed; the pages were carefully leafed with gold. “Would you care to explain this?”

“ _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ ,” Aziraphale read aloud. He took a long gulp of his drink [4] and smiled guiltily. “You must admit, though... it’s a jolly good title. Quite gripping, rea-- er, where are you going?”

“Madagascar.”

“What about our box at _Don Giovanni_ this evening?”

The door slammed.

“Dear, me.”

Outside the shop window, the nightingale began to sing.

\------------------

[1] This had been rather difficult for Aziraphale to come by, especially as an unpleasant young man with small, darting eyes and a perpetual scowl was unwaveringly determined to obtain it for his own library. The verbal fencing match that was held between them spanned the agonizing breadth of twenty-five minutes, and the price went on to reach a height that would make even the most seasoned man of leisure flinch. Aziraphale was eventually crowned victor, and although he was neither familiar with the book or its proposed significance, he reasoned that anything which inspired such enthusiastic spending from another literary connoisseur was a worthwhile acquisition. As the auction came to a close, Aziraphale wished the young man a pleasant evening, to which he received only a murmur of scorn in return; he was unable to shake the feeling that he was being followed by the cobwebs and shadows themselves as he returned to his shop.

[2] They were, of course, more a technicality of ne’er-do-well one-upmanship.

[3] If Aziraphale had learned only one thing during their stay there, it was that whimsical aliases ought to be thoroughly considered and discussed by both parties before being put into actual service. A classic case of mistaken identity might be seen as little more than a fashion faux pas, but use of the same name is wont to draw more than a few stares.

[4] One of his more useful achievements in recent years: a rather splendid combination of chocolate liqueur and cool cherry cream. Crowley hated it.


End file.
